In my very first blog post, I mention being a little bit social media averse. I have a lot of social media accounts and I check them regularly, but I almost never post things myself. Before this class the last and only time I had tweeted was in 2018, I haven’t posted on Instagram since 2017, and my Facebook has been all but abandoned since 2016. So I knew how to use twitter but making tweets was very much brand new.
Over this process, I have found that I quite like twitter and the quick, simple, uncomplicated format that it allows for sharing thoughts and ideas. I have so far, been slacking on the resource sharing and interaction aspect of twitter so that is something I am going to be working on going forward.
Getting involved with #saskedchat
Last week our class participated in our very first Sask Ed Chat, and although I loved the experience and was able to connect with several other educators, I relate to a lot of the sentiments expressed by some of my other classmates about the experience. Both Haley and Kassia mention feeling overwhelmed by the whole experience and I definitely agree with that. Everything was so fast paced and using TweetDeck was so different than what I am used to considering I typically tweet from my phone and exclusively use that app for navigating twitter.
Things were not all negative though! I had a great time and was able to learn some new strategies and pocket some new advice that I had never considered using before. I also felt fairly prepared and confident to answer the questions as well! I have not spent a ton of time in the classroom, but I am taking this class post-internship and I come from a family of teachers so I have used and had the chance to see some of the strategies that we were being asked about in practice. I will definitely be taking part in more of these whenever I have the time! It was a great experience.
Bringing Twitter into the Classroom
This topic, of bringing Twitter into the classroom or your practice as an educator really stumps me! I definitely think it’s something educators should be using to network and for ideas but as someone approaching this class from an elementary education standpoint, I would definitely not be using twitter in those grades, so I don’t really know where I would start!
Question Time!
Even though I am not getting my degree in Secondary education, there’s a chance I will end up teaching in older grades, so for those of you with more experience or coming from the perspective of someone learning to teach those grades: What are some ways that someone could use twitter or social media in the classroom? Do you think it’s possible? What considerations would you need to make?
Feel free to drop your answers in the comments here or shoot me a tweet over on my account!
One Comment
Sarah Stroeder
This is a great post Abby! I really like the format of your post; the tweets you added in and the headers you use break up the text really nicely! Your first Twitter chat is always overwhelming, but it is a fantastic experience! I think Twitter chats are really cool because there’s not really anything like them on other platforms. I find Twitter really unique in that way. I definitely think it is possible to integrate Twitter into a secondary classroom! I always thought it would be cool to do a Twitter chat with your class, they could answer the questions you post (which could be related to any lesson) and then you would be able to go back and read all their answers afterward. Another idea could be to have students find articles that are shared on Twitter and evaluate whether they are a reliable source (for a digital literacy lesson). Students could also use Twitter to share their progress for a project. You could pick a unique hashtag for them to use, and then students would be able to comment on each other’s posts and follow their classmates’ progress! There definitely would be considerations to make. What precautions would you take and what discussions would you have with students before implementing one of these ideas into your classroom?